In this thread, we were discussing who kept their name after marriage, and who turfed it for their husband’s, and why.
My mother took my father’s name. I have kept my father’s name and not taken my husband’s.
I am (idly) thinking about how to name kids in such a situation. Hyphenation leads to problems in the next generation: if Mr Wexford-Smyth marries Mrs Davies-Jones, what will the kid’s name be? Little Wexford-Smyth-Davies-Jones? A headache! And what of his kids?
In some Spanish-speaking cultures, everyone has two surnames (one from mom and one from pop): one they use consistently but both appear on driver’s licences. I haven’t gotten a consistent answer from the two-named Spanish speakers I know on the subject of what happens when you get married (do you drop one of your names and take one of your spouse’s? Do you keep them both?) or have kids (which ones do you pass along?).
The best way I’ve seen to do it is to keep your mom’s name as a middle name, and use it when appropriate (official documents etc). You are still left with the choice of passing down the matrilineal name, or the patrilineal one, though … what do you think?
How do you Dopers do it? What difference do other factors, like features of the name itself, the gender of the child, or the relationship with the parent in question, make?
My son is a hyphen. I don’t know what he’ll do when he marries. I figure that’s for him and his wife to work out. He uses both the hyphenated name and my name alone, depending on the situation.
Nope. My wife didn’t take my last name when we married, and actually prefers to be called by her last name, which is the last name of her first husband.
When our son’s born (in April, if all goes well) he’ll get my husband’s surname.
We thought about hyphenating, but we both have slightly longish names, and together they sound really close to an airline company. So not only does it sound silly, but he’d have to a 16 letter hyphenated name for standardized tests- not fun
I kept my maiden name when I married. My kids all have hyphenated last names. The older two have Mine-Exhusband, the younger two have Mine-Current Husband.
My oldest son uses his father’s last name on a casual basis; the younger, I believe, uses mine.
I leave it to them to decide if and when they want to switch over to a single last name…I wouldn’t be hurt if they dropped my name; I just felt they should have the option.
My son has my surname, since his bio. father has had nothing to do with him past conception. Should I get married, I intend to keep my maiden name, partly because it’s my name, dammit, and I see no reason to change it, and partly because it’s also my son’s name, and I don’t want him to feel separated from any family that may come to be. Of course, if I were to marry I would expect my husband to adopt my son as his own. So my son would have the option of changing his own name/adding to his name with my husband’s if he so desired. Even in that event, I’d retain my maiden name because it’s still my own name. Any subsequent children, I think I’d want to hyphenate but, of course, that’s a decision my hypothetical husband and I would have to consult each other on.
It’s a bit convoluted. I’ve given it some thought – I hashed this all out with a former SO and we had a serious blowout over it. He said that if I wasn’t willing to take his name then I wasn’t the “kind of girl” he’d want to marry. Note the “former” – what a tool that guy was.
I agree, Green Bean, there is no ‘best way’ beyond what works for each person. Use the name you want to use ! That’s a pretty good way.
But on the other hand (and I’m not trying to force anything on anyone, just playing a little devil’s advocate), there is some degree of practicality to having one consistent way of doing it: it’s much easier to tell who is related to who. Is this not important any more? I’m tempted to say ‘It’s none of anyone’s business who my father or husband is’. My sister actually says she’ll take her husband’s name ‘so the kids won’t be confused’, which I think is a really dumb reason (because kids don’t tend to get confused by these sorts of things) … But really, in the age of on-line names and global communities, it’s not so relevant any more. I don’t really care if you’re the son of the blacksmith or the wife of the weaver.
In other news …
I know someone who was given her mother’s maiden name (‘Jones’) as a first name and father’s surname as a surname. The mother divorced, took back her own name (Jones), and then married someone with the same surname as hers (Jones). So we reckon she should take her mother’s surname, hypenate it with her step-dad’s surname, and then she could introduce herself, James Bond-syle, as in
“Jones-Jones. Jones Jones-Jones.”
(It’s even funnier because it’s a really uncommon name, that really rolls off the tongue)
I am one of those kids who got the hyphenated surname. My mother chose to keep her maiden name when she got married. I was originally going to just get her name, but my dad’s parents got upset about the family name not being passed on and managed to convince him that there was a problem, too. So now my last name is mother’sname-father’sname. It almost never fits on anything, people always leave out the hyphen or think that my father’s last name is my only last name. It’s an annoyance. If I get married, I fully intend to take my husband’s name.
She didn’t take my name because she had had enough of tradition by that point, and she hates her own parents so much that she’d rather be addressed using the name of a man who had an affair and ran out on her than a name her parents provided for her.
Your first last name is usually your father’s first last name. Your second last name is your mom’s first last name. Your kid will get his/her father’s first last name as his/her first last name, and his/her mom’s first last name as his/her second last name.
Of course, a woman may decide to give her kids both of her last names if she doesn’t know the father/doesn’t want to give the kids the father’s last name. And in past centuries, having your mom’s last names meant that you were born out of wedlock.
I do wonder if it is possible to do it the other way, giving the mom’s first last name first, and the dad’s first last name second.
They’ll be given my husband’s last name. (Which I took as well.) Like I mentioned in the first thread, I grew up with not only a hyphenated last name, but first name as well and I really loathed it.
When my sister married, she took the second last name of our maiden name and hyphenated it with her husband’s last name, and started using the first part of our maiden name as a middle name. (Laura Smith-Jones married Mark Brown, now she’s Laura S. Jones-Brown) She insists on referring to me with two last names, as she uses, and I really really don’t care for it at all. There are enough letters in my first and last name alone to run out of spaces on standardized forms, I don’t need any more.
I’d try to name my kids as simply as possible. I picture them making appointments and always having to say, “It’s Smith-Jones, with a hyphen.” It’s the same reason I’ll never give my kids a name with a “unique” spelling: “It’s Ashliegh with an I-E-G-H.” As a person who has to patiently spell my last name (sometimes several times), I can’t imagine saddling my kid with a name which takes extra explanation. It gets annoying after a while.
Both of our kids have their mother’s unmarried name as their middle name. When we married my wife took my last name and shifted her last name to her middle name (since where’s she’s from they don’t have middle names). So now I am the only one in my family without that middle name. Although I sometimes use it as my middle name as sort of a joke, but only at home. No hyphens, no muss. So if my daughter (or son) should change their last name if they marry, then they’ll still have their mother’s family name as their middle name. Unless they change it.
Aside to Gundy: I think whatever guy is lucky enough to marry you should change his last name to yours.
Fella bilong missus flodnak and I actually had some trouble with this one. Not the way you might think: both of us saw good arguments against giving the kids our own last name. His name is extremely common; mine is extremely uncommon (and although it’s spelled phonetically, something about it seems to freak people out so they misspell it anyway :rolleyes: ). The clincher was that we had decided that if our first child was a boy, we would name him Kenneth, which is way too alliterative with my last name. So we had a boy, and we went with fbmf’s surname as flodjunior’s last name and my surname as his middle name. In the interests of consistency, we used the same pattern for totnak.
Under Norwegian law, when they become adults, they can choose to invert the order of their middle and last names, or drop one of them, simply by filing a form stating their intent at the appropriate office. That’s a big reason why we wanted to do it the way we did. Ultimately they’ll make the choice.
Would you believe I’m in total agreement with you?
Talk about brightening a girl’s day. How sweet of you to say! Thanks!
You know, reading this thread is a blessed relief. I realize that many, many women opt to keep their maiden names upon marrying and that my opinion on that is far from rare, but after the heated discussions I had with the one SO where he reacted with such amazement and frankly, disgust that I would want to do so, I began to wonder if I was a little goofy. Most of my friends changed their names when they were married, and I think that their choices were great for them, and made them happy so I’m happy for them. In my case, since I’m a single mom whose child shares my maiden name, I think the name-changing is a little more complicated. And in the end, names don’t make a family – hearts do.
Pepper Mill kept her own last name. Our daughter MilliCal has my last name, but my wife’s as a middle name. Actually, as a second middle name – when we’re mad at her, she knows it, because we rattle off the whole string.
Oddly, our hospital sometimes hyphenates my wife’s name. We have never requested this. In fact, we asked them not to do it. But that’s how she’s filed in there.
I really, really don’t like the whole hyphenated-names thing. I don’t know about you, but to me it smacks of false gentility. I didn’t grow up on the family estate, play polo and hobnob with the Earl of Chester! I have no problem at all with keeping a maiden name or adopting a husbands (or wife’s even!). Just don’t tell me you’re Gumby Ruttledge-Smythe and expect me to take you seriously.
